Discuss : is ffxiv in trouble

[Raoabolic]

Listen OP, the game isn't going away as long as there are whales that spend their money in a cash shop for a subscription based game. Sure, it makes the devs lean harder and harder on the cash shop with it's prices but at least the game it's going away! It's just going to... be alive, in a sense. lmao

[TaleraRistain]

No, it's not in trouble. Will some players playing now eventually quit? Yes. That's the nature of MMOs. New players will come to replace them. We can see from all the sprouts around for the XBox beta that interest in the game is still alive and well. The game has changed over 10 years and it will change again and some may need to make the choice to leave and find something more suitable. That's also the nature of MMOs.

If you want to see a truly dead game, go pop your head into EverQuest or EverQuest II. Yeah, they're both still getting expansions, but there's not a lot of new blood flowing through.

[NanaWiloh]

The game has problems but the community had problems as well. There are more then a handful of matters that gamers shove their heads up their arse and act entitled over.

[Grizzlpaw]

Uh, the game already has people of color, women in positions of power (excelling in combat and/or politics), people who are interested in the same sex romantically, and people who claim to have no gender. The game is already as '' woke '' as Japanese games come.

Idk why any of this should bother anyone. This isn't really political it's just people living their best lives.
Now if the game starts talking about tax policy I'm leaving not out of principle but out of boredom.

[strawberrycake]

People need to learn that time and money spent on a game is for satisfaction of the moment only, just like any other form of entertainment. It is not an investment that's supposed to yield future benefits.

That's not to say suggestions for improvements shouldn't be made but we shouldn't come to expect that those suggestions will be implemented. What happens with a game is outside of our control.

What is in our control is whether or not we will continue to play. Play a game because you enjoy what it is, not what it might be. You're only adding stress and frustration to your life if you stick around because you think it might be something different eventually. Do other things that don't frustrate you, then return once the game actually becomes what you were hoping for.

Yeah the philosophy of just leaving and hoping they listen is what lead to EW, I would rather break this habit of people being stubborn on both the Devs and within the player base and have them just be better about dealing with feed back and not playing Ignorant to half the things that are said about this game. That includes nicely wording the same nonses Yoshida spewed out his mouth when it came to *just play something else* because at this point it's just an excuse to be lazy and it's showing.

Also the implication that people aren't in fact doing other things while offering feed back is a lame one.

Also Control NOT being in the players hands is why games are so bad now, literally.

[Striker44]

Yeah the philosophy of just leaving and hoping they listen is what lead to EW, I would rather break this habit of people being stubborn on both the Devs and within the player base and have them just be better about dealing with feed back and not playing Ignorant to half the things that are said about this game. That includes nicely wording the same nonses Yoshida spewed out his mouth when it came to *just play something else* because at this point it's just an excuse to be lazy and it's showing.

Also Control NOT being in the players hands is why games are so bad now, literally.

I think the issue is that, well, a statement like this is nothing more and nothing less than one person's (your own) personal opinion. I have a personal opinion, too, and it happens to be very much the opposite. If that philosophy "lead to EW", then I'm all for it, because I've really enjoyed EW. I don't view what the dev team says as "an excuse to be lazy," but rather simply acknowledging that reality that the one thing "literally" true here is that it will be impossible to please everyone, so the devs are going to do what is their right and make their own game - and we can choose whether we enjoy it or not and whether to play it or not. And I don't see games being "bad" now. Some of the games I've been enjoying have all been made relatively recently, such as the Ori and Nier games. Not to mention 2023 having been seen as one of the biggest years for hugely popular games (BG3, Elden Ring, etc.). Games overall seem in fine shape these days.

So people shouldn't try and fix the game they put this much time and money into?

Again, the issue here is potentially starting with a flawed premise ("the game is broken"). It may be broken to you. It may not be broken to someone else. What you consider "fixing" it may in fact be breaking it for others. I'm yet to see a single person claim the game is "perfect". I've offered my own opinions on things I feel could be improved, such as the chat log UI, glamour system, and FC interface. None of that "breaks" the game for me, though, and I'm still very much having a blast.

It's something I feel is a flaw of the forums. This place has very much created a negative echo chamber for itself, which can lead to people thinking "see, so many other people agree with me that the game is bad", while ignoring that we represent practically nothing of the playerbase. The devs have far more data available to them than any of us. They get a much better pulse on what is working, what isn't ideal but is still tolerable, and what needs changing. We just frustrate ourselves when we only listen to our echo chamber, ignore the hundreds of thousands of other players, and then moan that the devs aren't listening to you and me personally. They are - they're just listening to everyone else, too, and the everyone else may just completely outnumber you and I.

[Supersnow845]

I’ve never understood the argument of “the forums are a negative echo chamber so you should just assume that everyone who isn’t on here is mostly happy” for 2 reasons

1) this is where we are told to come to make a complaint if we aren’t happy with something in the game, complaints are why this forum exists

2) if square has such hard and fast data on the fact that these complaints don’t represent the general playerbase why do they never engage with us on here, you could shut the entire healer subforum up in 5 seconds if a GM posted “according to squares internal data healer gameplay and engagement are where we desire them to be at and as such we do not see a reason to redesign the healers again”. Instead they remain completely silent while we argue over the tiny bit of data we can pull from the game ourselves

The fact that the devs tell us to come to the forums then just ignore us while we argue amongst ourselves is exactly why the forums are the way they are

[Y2K21]

I wouldnt say that the game is in trouble, but more the MMO genre is stagnant and not growing.

[Striker44]

I’ve never understood the argument of “the forums are a negative echo chamber so you should just assume that everyone who isn’t on here is mostly happy” for 2 reasons

1) this is where we are told to come to make a complaint if we aren’t happy with something in the game, complaints are why this forum exists

2) if square has such hard and fast data on the fact that these complaints don’t represent the general playerbase why do they never engage with us on here, you could shut the entire healer subforum up in 5 seconds if a GM posted “according to squares internal data healer gameplay and engagement are where we desire them to be at and as such we do not see a reason to redesign the healers again”. Instead they remain completely silent while we argue over the tiny bit of data we can pull from the game ourselves

The fact that the devs tell us to come to the forums then just ignore us while we argue amongst ourselves is exactly why the forums are the way they are

1.) Complaints are only one small, small portion of why this forum is supposed to exist. If it was the sole reason, it would be called the Complaints forum, or even Complaints sub-forum. This forum exists for a wide variety of purposes, in the case of "General Discussion," to discuss anything and everything about the game.

2.) "if square has such hard and fast data on the fact that these complaints don’t represent the general playerbase why do they never engage with us on here" I feel like this sentence answers itself. They don't engage with us here because they know this forum isn't representative of anything useful. I'm guessing they also realize the psychological value of giving people a place to vent, anyway. They are a business, after all, and people who get the chance to vent and/or feel like they're making a connection with other forum posters are more likely to stick around longer. Just my thoughts on the matter...

(General Point - I can't recall anyone ever saying someone should assume everyone who isn't here is happy. All I've said is not to assume that everyone in the general playerbase mimics the forums in thought, and that the devs have far more information than we do on the subject. You seem to be setting up a straw man, which implies a lack of ability to validly counter the actual point being made.)

[strawberrycake]

All of this

But thats just it, it's the constant assumptions that go on that anyone critical of the expansion didn't enjoy it, I enjoyed, XIV is a game I love and care for very mcuh. But that Shouldn;t have to be explained when I'm literally here talking about what feels like a lack of attention to the consumer. I'm not the entire playerbase, but I feel like I, unlike many here, at least have went out my way to talk to many people as I could and have considered the different positions prior to even making a statement on said forums.

I raid, I do casual content, I rp, I help manage servers for XIV, even if they're personal ones, that still counts, I join learning parties and clear parties, I help people learn the game, I try to involve myself as much as possible in the game I enjoy as a hobby. However, the XIV community, instead of calling attention the companies lack of interaction on these forums where with other MMOs the devs are active and responding to said feed back, or a community manager, we just hand wave it. It makes these problems that everyone wants to minimize bigger then what they have to be. And literally everyone in the community lies down and accepts that. Bar the Eastern player bases who have zero problems talking about how much the lack of their presence is felt.

Also I know for a fact I am not in an echo chamber, I don't need a single person around here to confirm what I've seen, played and know, Thats the wonderful aspect of actually being involved with the larger community. The self same community filled with people who would come here more often IF the devs were actually present on here, the selfsame people who would be here IF ya'll could take someone being critical and not tell them quit, take a break, tell them they're burnt out, when they have reasonable feelings, gripes and issues with the game.

And as for the devs seeing the bigger picture, smart devs would actually use all the free data generated by it's own community to actually hone in on whats what and what people are actually doing, but low and behold they have their whole weird ass issue with third party everything, sadly including that free player generated info and data.

So no, It;s not just people out numbering you or me, or that the game isn't or is tolerable, it's that so much of this could be fixed if they weren't vague. And what I mean by Vague is telling us of, the concepts for the new expansion, but not confirming how much of it we're getting per patch, not showing us these new systems in action, not letting us have an idea of their plans so we can actually, as a community, keep them from making content thats gonna be DOA, and actually considering ways to balance the game better from our perspective. We aren't all knowing and neither are they. But asking them to work closer with us as a community and create more direct back and forth is apparently a sin in this community.